


Falling (Off Chairs) For You

by cosetties



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Communication Failure, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, seriously when do i ever write fics without communication failure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:11:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosetties/pseuds/cosetties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>According to the rant on his laptop, Enjolras has a crush on someone perfect, beautiful, and so mysterious Enjolras doesn't even refer to him by name. Grantaire struggles to not let it get to him. (Spoiler alert: It does.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling (Off Chairs) For You

**Author's Note:**

> Instead of working on things I should actually be working on, I decided to write mindless fluff instead. Unbeta'd because it's three in the morning and people are asleep.

Enjolras had a crush.

The kind of debilitating, head-over-heels crush that morphed perfectly serious strongly-worded letters into decidedly unserious essays on the blue of someone’s eyes or how he could dance up a storm if given the chance. The kind of crush Grantaire had on Enjolras, now that he thought about it. The irony wasn’t lost on him—he lived for these _aha_ moments, when it seemed like life existed for the sole purpose of entertaining gods who couldn’t afford cable.

Grantaire just wished irony didn’t fuck over his love life.

When he had first glanced over the digression in the letter, a small hope inside of him began to bloom. Enjolras had made a recent effort to extend his patience when it came to Grantaire, and in turn, Grantaire had made an effort to have no need of the extra patience. Enjolras even invited him to drop by his apartment anytime and let himself in using the key Enjolras left under his doormat.

But the hope had died with every praising word Enjolras had typed. The Other Man was worthy of Enjolras, and Grantaire, well, Grantaire was the type to catalogue every one of his imperfections when reading about how much Enjolras loved this man’s face, his arms, his sense of humor, and the witty banter they would engage in.

Grantaire was okay. He really was. He had expected nothing from Enjolras for this very reason—to escape disappointment of the crushing variety. Nonetheless, he figured he was entitled to some melodramatics. 

He laid his head in his folded arms, beating a fist against the expensive marble of Enjolras’s countertop. The sound that choked out of his throat was not merely a groan but the culmination of every dread, doubt, and angsty ice-cream-and-chick-flick session he’d had in Enjolras’s name.

Bahorel would probably kill Grantaire for all the chick flicks he had made the other man watch in vain. He did seem to connect with Bridget Jones on a spiritual level though. But then again, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Colin Firth is a very fine man.

Courfeyrac had predicted this, weeks ago, when he decreed the daze in Enjolras’s eyes and the newfound inclination to succumb to distractions during meetings could only have one cause: love.

Actually, he’d said, “Enjolras wants to bang someone. On a table. Over a chair. Hard. In kinky positions. In public. Not in public. On the kitchen table in the Musain, which, if you ask me, is a truly shitty idea because why would anyone want to give Joly a heart attack? That’s just rude.”

Grantaire had sat silently, staring at an fascinating growth of mold in the back corner of the room.

Courfeyrac snapped his fingers in front of Grantaire’s face. “Did I break your brain? I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Enjolras and sex in the same sentence.”

Grantaire whimpered.

“But hey! Look on the bright side. It could be you.”

If Grantaire’s brain had broken before, it now sat in irreparable pieces in his skull, and all the king’s men couldn’t put it together again.

Even with nearly irrefutable proof sitting in front of him, in the form of a slowly dying laptop, Grantaire couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of Enjolras and _love_. Although Enjolras never showed any signs of reciprocating Grantaire’s feelings, at least he displayed the same lack of interest in everyone else he met.

Grantaire hadn’t factored in bright-eyed men with winning smiles, though.

He should leave, forget about all of this. Call it self-preservation, or shameless denial. Grantaire just wanted to call it a day, cry, and use this as an excuse to get Cosette to bake him some cookies.

He managed to nudge most of his butt off the stool before Enjolras poked his head into the room.

Speak of the devil, he thought.

Then he fell off the stool.

“Are you okay?” Enjolras’s hands were on his arms and pulling him up in seconds. The skin-to-skin contact did nothing to steady Grantaire’s wobbly legs. Water droplets still clung to Enjolras’s skin, and they rubbed off on Grantaire now, clouding his resolve to leave. He had expected—okay, hoped for—cute bedhead, maybe a stretch that would reveal a strip of skin underneath the too-tight t-shirts Enjolras slept in.

He hadn't expected Enjolras in boxers, wet from the shower. 

Grantaire wondered if the Other Man had the same reaction to Enjolras Grantaire had. Probably. It was Enjolras, after all.

“I’m fine,” Grantaire insisted, assessing his wounds. Light bruising on his knees, nothing he hadn’t dealt with before.

Grantaire allowed Enjolras to maneuver him back onto the stool, hand clutching the marble and foot looped around the bar connecting the legs of the chair. Enjolras sat down in his own chair but kept his hands on Grantaire’s knees, no more than a light touch.

“Are you sure?” he asked skeptically.

Grantaire didn’t have the heart to push Enjolras away. “Seriously. I’m just bruised. You surprised me.”

Enjolras nodded towards the flyer designs. “Do you want to...”

“Oh, right. The flyers.” Truth be told, he had forgotten all about them. “The flyers you wanted me to design while you were here. Writing strongly-worded letters. Very strongly-worded. In fact, if I were you, I would tone down the strength a little. Or a lot. That too.”

A few minutes passed before Enjolras understood. When he did, his face drained of color at a rate Grantaire never thought possible. He recoiled like he’d been slapped, which worked out fine, actually, because it lessened the probabiliy of Grantaire jumping him.

Which would only end in tears and rejection because Enjolras was in love with someone else, goddammit.

Enjolras pulled the laptop into his lap and scrolled through the letter, cringing at every cliché he had written the night before, or, knowing him, at three in the morning. “You looked through my laptop?”

“It was right there!” Grantaire protested. “I had to look something up, and my phone wasn’t working, so...” Enjolras shot him another scathing look. “I tried to avoid it, but it stared at me in the face, and I swear, I thought it was a harmless letter at first.”

Enjolras’s face switched from expression to expression until it settled on haughty. “It was two in the morning. I can’t be held accountable for my actions then. My thoughts were drifting.”

“You have a _crush_ on someone.” Grantaire didn’t mean to sound like a six-year-old on a playground. He tried again, “You have feelings for someone.”

No matter how he phrased it, the words left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I do not.”

Grantaire snagged the laptop from Enjolras’s lap and placed it on his own. The light of the screen illuminated his face as the read.

“You started writing a letter to Javert about his corrupt police force, but about halfway through, you began waxing poetic about some guy. Look, there’s an entire paragraph on his eyes, another on his hands, and two on his ability to string an argument together. I stopped when you started describing him shirtless.”

Grantaire bet he wasn’t a hackneyed starving artist with an alcohol problem. Someone smart, and dedicated, who could believe in things without nagging voices in his head warning him that belief would only leave him alone and disappointed. Nice too, well-mannered enough for Enjolras to take home to his parents without the threat of raised eyebrows and disdainful glares.

From what Enjolras had written, this guy was godlike perfection personified, so he’d probably get along with his friends, and they would finally have a functioning member of society to fill in the chair Grantaire couldn’t help feeling he was saving until someone better came along.

Enjolras twisted his hands together. “I never saw this coming. I suppose I’m still nervous about him finding out.”

“You mean he doesn’t know?”

Enjolras sucked in a breath. “What if—I have been cruel to him in the past. I’ve been trying to remedy that, but he doesn’t seem to notice. What if he never does?”

There was just something so, so wrong about giving Enjolras love advice. “If he’s oblivious enough to not notice you hitting on him, then he doesn’t deserve you. At all,” Grantaire added for good measure.

Enjolras looked at him very pointedly.

“Is it one of my boxing or fencing friends? Is that why you’re—you’re looking at me like you’re trying to tell me something?” Grantaire gulped. “It’s not Jeremy, is it? Dude has a nice ass, I admit, but he’s a jerk, I’m telling you.”

“It’s not any of your friends, and it’s certainly not Jeremy. He punched you.”

“Yes, that’s what people do when they _box_.”

Looking straight into Grantaire’s eyes, Enjolras said, clearly, “He’s amazing, and no one tells him enough. I don’t tell him enough. He doesn’t tell himself enough, especially.”

Sweat dotted on Grantaire’s brow. Here he’d thought no one could ever live up to Enjolras’s impossibly high standards. He himself fell unsurprisingly short.

But, Jesus, if Enjolras believed in this guy that much, Grantaire stood no chance of drawing him away.

“Why are you doing this?” he croaked.

“What am I doing?” Enjolras had the gall to look genuinely confused.

Grantaire gestured around wildly. “This! You know, you must know that I’m in love with you, I have been since I met you. I get it, I’m not good enough for you, but you’ve never been cruel enough to rub it into my face before.”

Enjolras flinched away in shock, and that was all the answer Grantaire needed.

If Enjolras was allowed to spring something like this on him, Grantaire was allowed to make dramatic exits. Kicking off with his foot, he swiveled around in the stool and hopped off gracefully, his back to Enjolras.

One problem.

Grantaire had forgotten that the chair did not actually swivel, and so his graceful hop became more of a clumsy flop face-first into Enjolras’s lap. The face full of crotch did nothing to alleviate the tension in the room.

His cheeks burning, he tried to push away immediately, but Enjolras held fast.

“You’re in love with me?” he echoed, his voice strained.

“Goddammit, _yes_. Would you like me to debase myself even more?”

The sound that escaped Enjolras’s mouth began as low chuckles and gradually morphed into giddy laughter. Grantaire could replay this sound in his head on repeat and never grow tired of it.

“I like _you_.” Enjolras corrected, “I love you.”

Grantaire blinked. Once. Twice. Four times. Cocked his head to the side. Cocked his head to the other side. Closed his eyes. Opened his eyes. Noticed that Enjolras still hadn’t run away after realizing the clear mistake that had wormed its way out of his mouth.

“I don’t get it,” was Grantaire’s stunningly coherent reply.

In one swift move, Enjolras tilted Grantaire’s chin up and bended down until they met at eye level.

“You’re dense,” he said, very astutely, before swooping down to press their mouths together in a lingering kiss. Enjolras made up for his lack of experience with determination, and before Grantaire knew what was really going on, Enjolras’s tongue probed at his closed lips, asking for permission to venture in and make this a lot more exciting.

And Grantaire got it.

Then they both fell off the chair, their lips still connected.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://cossetcosette.tumblr.com/)


End file.
